Thursday

Here is a sweet new spot from the ladies & gentlemen at Sony. It promotes their website http://www.dontwalkalone.com/ which just happens to feature 4 other very entertaining spots. As pointed out by glossy the featured commercial is a throw back to Atari.

Website is in French but you can still see all of the video. Agency is Vanksen from Paris.

In the second paragraph of the Creativity magazine article begins, "Right now the agency (Crispin Porter + Bogusky) is probably the hottest in the United States." It is amazing for me to read those words being written about us. In a lot of ways it is the culmination of a dream that seemed silly to everyone I know except my wife. She really did see it happening all those years ago and has never been surprised by our successes. Even when I wanted her to be surprised. But dreams need to last a lifetime and we're not dead yet. Some of you just arrived and I imagine you are hoping that you haven't gotten here right after all the excitement either. So we need some new lofty goals. I have a few that always get my blood going.

Being "hot" as they put it in the Creativity article feels pretty fickle. And how "hot" something got usually is a pretty poor indicator of how much impact it had on the world. Case in point: The Razor scooter. I don't want to be a Razor scooter. I want to change the world. At least a few little bits of it.

I want people to say "then cp+b came along and changed things and now nobody does it that old way anymore."I want to be the agency that ruined it for every other agency in the world.I want old fashioned agencies to look at us and see their own demise because they know they won't be able to do what we do.I want to continue to evolve and morph into what all the smart people we hire want us to become.I want to be a great place for clients to keep their brands and I want to be an even greater place to work.I want to become known as the best place to work in south florida.I want us all to look for more ways to help out in our community.I want to run our company the way every 12 year old dreams of running a company because 12 year olds are right.I want to be the agency that ruined it for every other agency in the world. We make our clients famous by any means at our disposal. We need to be what ad agencies will become. When Steve Breen from Molson spoke today you could see how excited he was about our bizarre and fresh way of looking at brand building. And Molson hasn't even begun to tap into that yet. They're still just using us as a typical agency and all he can think about is what we will build that twists his product and his marketing and his PR into one big Molson famous makin' machine.Here's the tricky part.I want us to do all this while keeping the qualities that make us decent folks to hang out with.I want us to remain humble. Past success is no measure of what we will do so best to be humble. After all it's just advertising anyhow.I want us to hold onto our ability to accomplish a lot with a lot less than most agencies. The huge amounts of money that we are put in charge with should always be looked at in terms of what it can accomplish outside of what we are doing with it. $100,000 might seem like less money than you might want to produce a national tv spot but remember you can build a freaking house with it. Always keep perspective on the money you are allocating.

And finally, I want us to keep having fun and being good to one another. Because otherwise, why bother with all the rest.A good friend of mine wrote me recently because he was frustrated with the advertising business and frustrated by so many of the people he works for and with. He wrote. "It astounds me how people are afraid of so many things but mediocrity never seems to be one of them."I'm afraid to be mediocre. I'm afraid to stop getting better. I hope you are, too. Because to the rest of the world that looks like courage. Just look at Creativity magazine.

Facebook announced today that they are developing software that will allow marketers to target users based on information displayed in their profiles. For example, if you list "Radiohead" and "Coldplay" as bands you enjoy, customized banners from music outlets will be sure to tie that information into their ads.

Soon, marketers will not only be able to target based on age and location, but what your hobbies, tastes, friends and interests are. For those of us who use Facebook (the average user checks their profile at least 6 times a day), you might already notice that the banner ads are suited to your demographic - how many Classmates.com banners have most 18-24 year-olds seen lately?

What is staggering is the amount of personal information that people list within their profiles; work status, where they live, what they watch, what school they went to, etc. The ability to create a well-targeted campaign would certainly peak a number of brands interests and in the near future, expect ads to relate to your information directly - think Minority Report.

£5000 in £10 and £20 notes were individually dropped around the streets of London with a removable sticker that read, 'Carlsberg don’t do litter. But if they did it would probably be the best litter in the world’.

I like how they came up with a stunt or guerilla idea (you pick your terminology) that actually really connects to the campaign. Too often these sort of stunts are created purely for the viral effect and to increase brand talkability with no campaign integration.

Seven of the top 10 posts were for major music artists (from Avril to My Chemical Romance). Could show that the major celeberties are still able to break through the Wild West of videos with their strong brands / mass messages. Still, some good other content rounds out the top 10.

Where does Cannes 2007 Gold Lion Winner Dove Evolution rank? Since the post in October of 2007, the viral "sensation" has just over 6 million views. All in all, quite impressive.

Tuesday

"If I had to sum it all up, I'd say there are three breeds of account executives: the play-it-safe-and-by-the-rule-book transmitting agent; the neutralist, who's never quite sure from one day to the next of his role in the agency-client relationship; and the truly creative account man, who may never write a line of copy in his life, but who, in his own way, is every bit as creative as the finest copywriter in the business."

First produced at a factory in Hannover, Germany the CD has become a dust collector on the shelves of music stores worldwide. A friend actually got made fun of the other day on a flight home from Thailand for having a DiscMan.

In today's world of innovation and constant change one can only dream of being apart of something that sees it's 25th birthday and is still somewhat relevant. Even if it is only still relevant because the recording industry refused for years (and still does to some degree) to accept reality and embrace the MP3.

After reading the new Wired issue last night, I found a great article about a growing phenomenon called Pecha Kucha. The concept of Pecha Kucha (founded by architect's Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham) was conceived in 2003 "as a place for young designers to meet, network and show their work in public'. For those of you who have been in a planning / architect presentation before, you know that they can run a bit long.

Pecha Kucha sets out clear presentation guidelines to encourage creative and extremely well-planned presentations. Each presentation consists of 20 slides. Each slide can show for only 20 seconds.

A nice way to focus your ideas and ensure a tight, concise presentation.

Monday

SuperVirals.com has now launched and I am really interested to see if it can deliver a high quality creative product consistently for their partners.

Basically you answer a brief, submit your idea as an image, audio file or video file (which means you assign all intellectual property right to SuperVirals.com) and then it is up to you to promote your idea and have your idea, viewed and commented on. The most active ideas win.

Currently they are offering $3000 for a supervirals launch idea. Other prizes include a years supply of Krispy Kreme donuts (I'll pass on this one). I wasn't able to find any details regarding what they charge thier partners or how you go about getting a breif on the site; but one would imagine there is a cost involved.

This is what the website has to say:

What's this SuperVirals thing all about?

SuperVirals is where creative people like you can win huge prizes just by uploading and sharing your original ideas for brands.

It's about time you got rewarded with a whole lot more than just recognition for your great content ideas...

Here's how it works:

A brand posts a simple Creator Brief and puts up a great Creator Prize for the winning idea.You think up and create an original idea - it can be a video, image or audio file.Then upload your idea before the open competition's countdown timer runs out - the more great ideas you upload, the better your chance of winning.Then, as long as your ideas fit the SuperVirals Creative Guidelines, they'll go into the competition's live phase to be viewed, seen, heard and shared across the web.The leadership battle begins! You've then got until the live competition's countdown timer runs out to share your idea with as many people as possible. The more people that check out and comment on your idea, the higher its SuperVirals Score will go!The idea that has the highest SuperVirals Score when the live competition's countdown timer runs out wins the Creator Prize.Get in the running! Check out the open competitions accepting new ideas here.

Sunday

An amazing video from last year's TED conference - using photograph's from Flickr , this application renders 3D images of real buildings / locations. A wonderful example of harnessing all of the new content on the web and creating new, facinating applications. Skip to 3 minutes to watch the demo.

Mark Godfrey's article, Getting the Message Across, gives an excellent perspective the future of convergence in China and the resulting effects on the media and advertising industries.

Some interesting stats include; China has over 500 million cell phone subscribers and that number is growing by approximately 50 million annually. Canada, in comparison, has about 16 million subscribers (roughly half of the total population.)

The article quotes Maurice Levy, chairman of the Publicis Groupe, discussing the Chinese market and the highly targeted digital advertisements that will be essential in the near future: "With convergence we can target adverts to specific customers...This allow[s] advertisers to target consumers likely to buy their products."

Sounds like a no-brainer, doesn't it? Although creating targeted ads is nothing new, what is interesting (and scary) is the amount of information that advertisers now have on individuals. Through internet and mobile technologies, ads will soon be targeted on your interests, likes / dislikes, time of day and feelings. Unlike a simple TV spot targeted an 18-24 demographic, mobile/internet executions will be tailored to your purchase history, site visits and Google searches.